Will never get over the mythology of the “CTO" in startups, as if that was a real position you would reasonably aspire to.
I am reliably informed by an HN commenter that a CTO is "the chief engineer" for a company.
When I was 23 I'm pretty sure I thought it would be rad if teams had "chief engineers”, too.
I'm writing this in part as a provocation. I would like someone to stick up for the role of "CTO" as a real thing. The people sticking up for it right now believe self-evidently silly things, like the "chief engineer" theory of the role.
My strong-form, non-weasel-y claim: there is no such thing as a "CTO role". Whatever an effective "CTO" does, it is better described by some other role --- “VP/Engineering", “VP/Product Management", "Staff Engineer”.
This seems Big If True. Should be easy to knock this argument down!
